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Recommended Dose: The Best Dance Tracks Of The Month

By Sami Yenigun and Otis Hart |
NPR

Laurent Garnier's "Bang (The Underground Doesn't Stop)" is one of our favorite dance tracks of the year so far. Courtesy of the artist

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Welcome to Recommended Dose, All Songs Considered’s roundup of our favorite dance tracks. We listen to literally hundreds of new songs each month, test the standouts on some very loud speakers, and highlight the best of the best in a 30-minute mix.

You can stream this month’s mix here or on NPR Music’s SoundCloud account. If you’d rather just hear each song individually, check out the playlist below. (But seriously, listen to the mix.)

L'estasi Dell'oro is the nom de plume of Brooklyn-based techno producer Christopher Ernst, and his new 12" for Macro Recordings features this vicious edit by labelhead Stefan Goldmann. We loved the way Goldmann ignites the mix with what sounds like a trash-can timpani drum. And listen closely around the 2:15 mark when the modulation gets super gnarly.

This is, quite simply, the underground hit of the year so far. Laurent Garnier gradually stacks crowd noise, brassy synths and wood block before dropping in a vocal sample that succinctly sums up what everyone's already thinking. When Sami spun this during a DJ set last weekend, he feared for the house's foundations.

Clap! Clap! is the alias of Italian producer, Cristiano Crisci, a former saxophonist who's made a deft transition to bass-heavy dance music. "Elon Mentana" is the lead track to Crisci's Tambacounda EP, which uses African field recordings as the launching pad for frenetic jams that sit just outside your standard house or techno template.

Dutch producer Steven Van Hulle will release his debut LP as Awanto 3 in April, but he leaked a few tracks online earlier this month. They're all great, but "Su What?" is especially rinse-worthy. The first 90 seconds are carried by children chanting (not unlike this classic Villalobos track), and then Van Hulle pulls an e-break slide and takes the track an entirely different direction.

Brooklyn producer Aurora Halal is a key figure in New York's DIY techno movement. She coordinates parties, runs her own label (Mutual Dreaming) and is about to release her debut solo EP, Passageway, in March. "Hazy G" is the squelchy A side, and it toes the line between Knight Rider synths and classic Detroit techno.

Jay Daniel is a young Detroit producer who grew up in a techno family. His mother, Naomi Daniel, sang vox for Carl Craig productions in the early 1990s, and now Jay is making a name for himself on Kyle Hall's Wild Oats label. His Karmatic Equations EP hits stores the first week of March, and "Royal Insanity" has an upbeat but chill vibe that felt like a natural way to wind down our Feburary set.